Max Help: FLAC

FLAC is the Free Lossless Audio Codec. It can be played on most operating systems, and is the only free (as in speech) lossless codec with hardware support.

The default compression level is 5. This is a preferable balance of encoding time and compression ratio. Lesser levels encode faster and larger; higher, slower and smaller. A compression level of 8 is significantly slower and only marginally smaller than a level of 5.

Custom settings

These settings aren't very useful to the average user. They significantly increases encoding time while achieving only a few extra percentage points of compression.

Ogg FLAC

Ogg FLAC is a FLAC file in the Ogg container format.

There is no difference in file size or quality, but if you want to edit the compressed audio or multiplex it with a video layer, then Ogg FLAC is the better choice.

Custom settings

The custom settings for Ogg FLAC are the same as those for FLAC.